An expandable and foldable tubular element composed of a number of planar units has various uses. For example, it may be used as a huge construction of space station, construction of moon base, used as support for human body blood vessel or digestive tract, or used as large or intermediate temporary residences after occurrence of serious natural disaster. When expanded, this kind of tubular element will define a space with certain volume. Also, it can be reduced to its smallest size by folding, thus bringing convenience in storage and transportation. In recent years, types of foldable tubular elements have been proposed by Hoberman in U.S. Pat. No. 4,780,344, U.S. Pat. No. 4,981,732 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,234,727, Guest and Pellegrino jointly, Sogame in U.S. Pat. No. 6,233,880B1, and proposed by Furuya and Nojima and so on. These are capable of folding and expanding as described above. These kinds of elements however fold and expand based on wide elastic and plastic deformation of materials used. It is hard to accurately control the process of folding and expanding and this imposes limitation on their application. Moreover, as deformation of the constitutional units of the element results in entire deformation of the element and accordingly, the current tubular foldable elements are generally used as a disposable products.